The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting (Politically Incorrect Guides) [Paperback]

Frank Miniter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2007 | Series: Politically Incorrect Guides

Why the Left's anti-hunting propaganda is dead wrong!
Nothing is more hated--and more misunderstood--by the trendy Left than hunting. But now intrepid hunter and pro-hunting activist Frank Miniter sets the record straight. In The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Hunting, he details the concrete benefits that hunting provides to all of us--even how it helps the environment. Speaking with wildlife biologists, hunters, farmers, anti-hunters, and victims of animal attacks, Miniter explains how banning hunting negatively affects wildlife populations and conservation. Miniter's fearless, politically incorrect take on hunting lays out the facts that liberal enviro-nuts don't want you to know, including:

*How a well-intentioned policy of "live and let live" with Florida alligators resulted in human deaths
*Why you're more likely to be attacked by a bear in an area where hunting is forbidden, such as a national park
*Why non-lethal alternatives to hunting don't work to control animal populations
*Why even vegetarians depend on hunting for their dinner (especially those who demand organic or locally grown food)
*How hunters are wildlife's best defenders--far more effective than big-budget "green" groups
*How deer cause more human deaths each year than sharks, cougars, bears, and alligators combined
*Why hunting is statistically safer for kids than football, bicycling, and tennis

If you love hunting, you need to arm yourself with The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Hunting, so that the next time you encounter an anti-hunter, you'll be equipped to shoot down politically correct myths and defend this great American sport against all attacks.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Why the Left's anti-hunting propaganda is dead wrong!

Nothing is more hated--and more misunderstood--by the trendy Left than hunting. But now intrepid hunter and pro-hunting activist Frank Miniter sets the record straight. In The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Hunting, he details the concrete benefits that hunting provides to all of us--even how it helps the environment. Speaking with wildlife biologists, hunters, farmers, anti-hunters, and victims of animal attacks, Miniter explains how banning hunting negatively affects wildlife populations and conservation. Miniter's fearless, politically incorrect take on hunting lays out the facts that liberal enviro-nuts don't want you to know, including:

*How a well-intentioned policy of "live and let live" with Florida alligators resulted in human deaths
*Why you're more likely to be attacked by a bear in an area where hunting is forbidden, such as a national park
*Why non-lethal alternatives to hunting don't work to control animal populations
*Why even vegetarians depend on hunting for their dinner (especially those who demand organic or locally grown food)
*How hunters are wildlife's best defenders--far more effective than big-budget "green" groups
*How deer cause more human deaths each year than sharks, cougars, bears, and alligators combined
*Why hunting is statistically safer for kids than football, bicycling, and tennis

If you love hunting, you need to arm yourself with The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Hunting, so that the next time you encounter an anti-hunter, you'll be equipped to shoot down politically correct myths and defend this great American sport against all attacks.

About the Author

Frank Miniter was a senior editor at Outdoor Life magazine and is currently the executive editor of American Hunter magazine. He has hunted on five continents and has won numerous awards for conservation and outdoor writing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 269 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing (August 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596985216
• ISBN-13: 978-1596985216
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #230,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Well Written, Eye Opening Book About Hunting, September 6, 2007

By 

John R. Lott Jr. - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting (Politically Incorrect Guides) (Paperback)

If you want to know the facts about hunting, this is the book to read. This isn't a how to hunt book, though after reading it, I wish that more people were hunters. Environmentalists, vegitarians, and even people driving in cars have a real friend in hunters. It would be nice if this book didn't have to be in the politically incorrect series, but it will seriously challenge a lot of people's strongly held views.

Possibly Miniter's book could be retitled "how hunting saves lives." Hunting seems to be a particularly cost effective way of saving people's lives. Deer collusions with cars kill 130 to 200 people a year and send 26,647 to hospitals. Deer also benefit from being hunted. One of my favorite chapters was how vegitarians are better off because hunting lowers the cost of farming in many ways.

But with the number of hunters declining in the US, not only as a share of the population but in absolute numbers, hopefully a lot of people will read Miniter's book.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Affected by poor sourcing and potential exaggeration, but far from bad - let alone "incorrect", January 30, 2008

By 

mianfei - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting (Politically Incorrect Guides) (Paperback)

The eleventh book in the erratic but fascinating "Politically Incorrect Guide" series takes a look at a subject my knowledge of Aboriginal foraging has entirely failed to help me understand, and which my previous reading of "New Age" literature or anti-hunting fanatics had clearly found me out even with the limited knowledge I could get at Melbourne University.

"The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting" demonstrates first of all how being an experienced hunter is an irreplaceable asset in understanding ecology. The knowledge Miniter gives of animal behaviour in particular, beats what I learned about environmental management as a student. Especially noteworthy is how he shows hunters must know a great deal about the behaviour deer and more essentially bears to hunt them at all. In a later chapter Miniter shows how this knowledge is needed to merely devise potential means of stopping animal-related accidents on roads and railways.

One good thing about "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting" is that Miniter focuses enough on the practical benefits of hunting to avoid being too ideological. Indeed, in contrast to most other "Politically Incorrect Guides", he does not follow the hard-line track so beloved of Human Events. Ample space is given to the potential negative effects of unregulated hunting on private land before Theodore Roosevelt, which is welcome from a publisher that too often omits anything that does not suit its arguments. Like Robert P. Murphy Miniter shows hunting can actually save species from extinction by preventing illegal poaching, but gives far more usable examples than Murphy does. Consequently Miniter cannot, like most "Politically Incorrect Guide" authors, be criticised as ignoring evidence from opponents: instead, he clearly recognises the need for regulation and does accept it matters little whether it comes from a private or public source.

The section about animal attacks on people are particularly good and provide the best possible argument for hunting. Although Miniter shows how hunting bans make potentially dangerous animals genuine threats to people they meet, I do have considerable suspicion of his statistics' accuracy because he fails to back a single one up with reliable sources. This is particularly true of the data about bear and cougar attacks, which quite probably are better reported with improved communication. Miniter's data as to the safety of hunting can probably be doubted for the same reason, but hunting is obviously not as dangerous as, say, motor racing or gridiron.

Having experience with deadly pests like cane toads, foxes and feral pigs in Australia, I very much agree with Miniter's point that hunting is a very effective way of limiting the population of vertebrate pests. Tim Low shows the extreme difficulty of controlling vertebrate pests, and Miniter confirms my belief that finding ways to use their parts (e.g. toad skins or feral pig meat) is a vital part of vertebrate pest control. Miniter's illustration of how these pests are at their most deadly on isolated islands like Hawaii agrees 100 percent with my basic knowledge of biodiversity, further adding to his credibility.

Another thing is that - though only for a small part of the book - Miniter at least tries to move beyond the usual American-centredness that plagues the "Politically Incorrect Guides" series. His information about how Italy and Japan face the same problems as the American West is certainly surprising, whilst his point about elephant overpopulation is well-placed. It's a pity he wouldn't go into how hunting's effect would be different in different environments.

Apart from the statistics which often look and sound quite exaggerated, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting" offers what other books in the series claim to do but do not - refuting politically correct myths.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-opening look at hunting, September 11, 2007

By 

John B. Snow (Norwalk, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting (Politically Incorrect Guides) (Paperback)

This is a fascinating account that takes apart the long list of misconceptions that most people hold about hunters and hunting. The author has done an impressive amount of research that demonstrates the contribution that hunters have made to saving wildlife and how the commonly-held beliefs about hunting--particularly those presented in mainstream media--are flat-out wrong.

Happily the book doesn't bog down in a sea of statistics. The author is clearly a natural storyteller and writes with a sense of humor about the topic that makes for easy reading.

This is an excellent book.